Quakers

"There are too many talkers, and few walkers in Christ."

"The Lord showed me, so that I did see clearly, that he did not dwell in these temples which men had commanded and set up, but in people's hearts … his people were his temple, and he dwelt in them."

"Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations wherever you come; that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone; whereby in them you may be a blessing, and make the witness of God in them to bless you."

"I told the Commonwealth Commissioners I lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion of all wars... I told them I was come into the covenant of peace which was before wars and strife were."

"Why should any man have power over any other man's faith, seeing Christ Himself is the author of it?"

"I was moved of the Lord to write a paper to the Protector, Oliver Cromwell; wherein I did, in the presence of the Lord God, declare that I denied the wearing or drawing of a carnal sword, or any other outward weapon, against him or any man; and that I was sent of God to stand a witness against all violence, and against the works of darkness; and to turn people from darkness to light; and to bring them from the causes of war and fighting, to the peaceable gospel. When I had written what the Lord had given me to write, I set my name to it, and gave it to Captain Drury to hand to Oliver Cromwell, which he did."

"When I came in I was moved to say, "Peace be in this house"; and I exhorted him to keep in the fear of God, that he might receive wisdom from Him, that by it he might be directed, and order all things under his hand to God's glory. l spoke much to him of Truth, and much discourse I had with him about religion; wherein he carried himself very moderately. But he said we quarrelled with priests, whom he called ministers. I told him I did not quarrel with them, but that they quarrelled with me and my friends. "But," said I, "if we own the prophets, Christ, and the apostles, we cannot hold up such teachers, prophets, and shepherds, as the prophets, Christ, and the apostles declared against; but we must declare against them by the same power and Spirit." Then I showed him that the prophets, Christ, and the apostles declared freely, and against them that did not declare freely; such as preached for filthy lucre, and divined for money, and preached for hire, and were covetous and greedy, that could never have enough; and that they that have the same spirit that Christ, and the prophets, and the apostles had, could not but declare against all such now, as they did then. As I spoke, he several times said, it was very good, and it was truth. I told him that all Christendom (so called) had the Scriptures, but they wanted the power and Spirit that those had who gave forth the Scriptures; and that was the reason they were not in fellowship with the Son, nor with the Father, nor with the Scriptures, nor one with another. Many more words I had with him; but people coming in, I drew a little back. As I was turning, he caught me by the hand, and with tears in his eyes said, "Come again to my house; for if thou and I were but an hour of a day together, we should be nearer one to the other"; adding that he wished me no more ill than he did to his own soul. I told him if he did he wronged his own soul; and admonished him to hearken to God's voice, that he might stand in his counsel, and obey it; and if he did so, that would keep him from hardness of heart; but if he did not hear God's voice, his heart would be hardened. He said it was true. Then I went out; and when Captain Drury came out after me he told me the Lord Protector had said I was at liberty, and might go whither I would. Then I was brought into a great hall, where the Protector's gentlemen were to dine. I asked them what they brought me thither for. They said it was by the Protector's order, that I might dine with them. I bid them let the Protector know that I would not eat of his bread, nor drink of his drink. When he heard this he said, "Now I see there is a people risen that I cannot win with gifts or honours, offices or places; but all other sects and people I can." It was told him again that we had forsaken our own possessions; and were not like to look for such things from him."

"The House being informed, that Two Quakers, (that is to say) George Fox, and Rob. Gressingham, have lately made a great Disturbance at Harwich; and that the said George Fox, who pretends to be a Preacher, did lately, in his preaching there, speak Words much reflecting on the Government and Ministry, to the near causing of a Mutiny, and is now committed by the Mayor and Magistrates there; Ordered, That the said George Fox, and Robert Gressingham, be forthwith brought up in Custody: And that the Sheriff of the County of Essex do receive them, and give his Assistance for the conveying them up accordingly, and delivering them into the Charge of the Serjeant at Arms attending this House."

"There's a light that is shining in the heart of a man, it's the light that was shining when the world began. There's a light that is shining in the Turk and the Jew and a light that is shining, friend, in me and in you."

"With a book and a steeple, with a bell and a key they would bind it forever, but they can't," said he. "Oh, the book it will perish and the steeple will fall, but the light will be shining at the end of it all."

"If we give you a pistol, will you fight for the Lord?" "But you can't kill the Devil with a gun or a sword!" "Will you swear on the Bible?" "I will not!" said he, "For the truth is more holy than the book, to me."

"There's an ocean of darkness and I drown in the night till I come through the darkness to the ocean of light, for the light is forever and the light it is free, "And I walk in the glory of the light," said he."

"It was three hundred years ago, in October 1656, that George Fox had a memorable interview with Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England. It was one of the great moments of a great century, for here, face to face, were two of the most powerful personalities of the age, the one the military dictator of the British Isles at the pinnacle of his worldly power, the other a crude, rustic preacher who had just spent eight months in one of England's foulest prisons. They met in Whitehall, at the very heart of the British government. Fox bluntly took the Protector to task for persecuting Friends when he should have protected them. Then characteristically he set about trying to make a Quaker out of Cromwell, to turn him to "the light of Christ who had enlightened every man that cometh into the world." Cromwell was in an argumentative mood and took issue with Fox's theology, but Fox had no patience with his objections. "The power of God riz in me," he wrote, "and I was moved to bid him lay down his crown at the feet of Jesus." Cromwell knew what Fox meant, for two years earlier he had received a strange and disturbing missive in which he had read these words:"

"“Perhaps the most remarkable incident in Modern History,” says Teufelsdrockh, “is not the Diet of Worms, still less the Battle of Austerlitz, Waterloo, Peterloo, or any other Battle; but an incident passed carelessly over by most Historians, and treated with some degree of ridicule by others: namely, George Fox’s making to himself a suit of Leather."

"Better heresy of doctrine than heresy of heart."

"Yet sometimes glimpses on my sight, Through present wrong the eternal right; And, step by step, since time began, I see the steady gain of man;"

"Again the shadow moveth o'er The dial-plate of time."

"I know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care."

"The hope of all who suffer, The dread of all who wrong."

"Perish with him the folly that seeks through evil good."

"Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time, So "Bonnie Doon" but tarry; Blot out the epic’s stately rhyme, But spare his "Highland Mary!""

"Making their lives a prayer."

"When faith is lost, when honor dies The man is dead!"

"So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn Which once he wore; The glory from his gray hairs gone For evermore!"

"Press bravely onward! — not in vain Your generous trust in human kind; The good which bloodshed could not gain Your peaceful zeal shall find."

"O, brother man! fold to thy heart thy brother; where pity dwells, the peace of God is there."

"What is good looking, as Horace Smith remarks, but looking good? Be good, be womanly, be gentle,—generous in your sympathies, heedful of the well-being of all around you; and, my word for it, you will not lack kind words of admiration."

"The windows of my soul I throw Wide open to the sun."

"Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, But spare your country's flag," she said."

"Beauty seen is never lost."

"The Night is Mother of the Day, The Winter of the Spring, And ever upon old Decay The greenest mosses cling."

"Tradition wears a snowy beard, romance is always young."

"We lack but open eye and ear To find the Orient's marvels here; The still small voice in autumn's hush, Yon maple wood the burning bush."

"The belief has been constantly expressed in England that in the United States, which has produced William Lloyd Garrison, Henry Ward Beecher, James Russell Lowell, John G. Whittier and Abraham Lincoln there must be those of their descendants who would take hold of the work of inaugurating an era of law and order. The colored people of this country who have been loyal to the flag believe the same, and strong in that belief have begun this crusade."

"I have in my hand a poem which our own beloved poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote almost fifty years ago, in the darkest hour of the midnight which brooded over our country. You are most of you, perhaps all, familiar with it. It is addressed to Mr. Garrison. Shall I read a single stanza? I do it to illustrate a point strongly put by our brother who has just taken his seat; that is, the power of a single soul, alone, of a single soul touched with sacred fire, a soul all of whose powers are enlisted the thought, the feeling, the susceptibility, the emotion, the indomitable will, the conscience that never shrinks, and always points to duty-I say, the power which God has lodged in the human mind, enabling to do and to dare and to suffer everything, and thank God for the privilege of doing it. To show also how, when one soul is thus stirred in its innermost and to its uttermost, it is irresistible; that wherever there are souls, here and there, and thick and fast, too, not merely one, and another, and another, of the great mass, but multitudes of souls are ready to receive the truth and welcome it, to incorporate it into their thought and feeling, to live and die for it. That was the effect of Garrison upon the soul of Whittier. He here gives us his testimony. The date of this is 1833-almost fifty years ago. He says in the third stanza: "I love thee with a brother's love,/I feel my pulses thrill/To mark thy spirit soar above/The cloud of human ill./My heart hath leaped to answer thine,/And echo back thy words,/As leaps the warrior's at the shine/And flash of kindred swords!""

"Most of the books published during the five-year period leading up to, during, and after the invasion of Mexico were war-mongering tracts. Euro-American settlers were nearly all literate, and this was the period of the foundational "American literature," with writers James Fenimore Cooper, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, John Greenleaf Whittier, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville all active-each of whom remains read, revered, and studied in the twenty-first century, as national and nationalist writers, not as colonialists. Although some of the writers, like Melville and Longfellow, paid little attention to the war, most of the others either fiercely supported it or opposed it...Opposition to the Mexican War came from writers who were active abolitionists such as Thoreau, Whittier, and Lowell. They believed the war was a plot of southern slave owners to extend slavery, punishing Mexico for having outlawed slavery when it became independent from Spain."

"In the poem of 'Snow-Bound' there are lines on the death of the poet's sister which have nothing superior to them in beauty and pathos in our language. I have read them often with always increasing admiration. I have suffered from the loss of those near and dear to me, and I can apply the lines to my own case and feel as if they were written for me. 'The Eternal Goodness' is another poem which is worth a crowd of sermons which are spoken from the pulpits of our sects and churches, which I do not wish to undervalue. It is a great gift to mankind when a poet is raised up among us who devotes his great powers to the sublime purpose of spreading among men principles of mercy and justice and freedom. This our friend Whittier has done in a degree unsurpassed by any other poet who has spoken to the world in our noble tongue. I feel it a great honor that my bust should stand in your hall near the portrait of your great poet."

"If God gives a real poet to a people like that, at a time like that, and puts into his heart those sentiments, and into his mouth those words, does he not verily speak to that people and ask them to return to the ways of mercy and righteousness?"

"I met some time ago during the American war an eminent citizen of the State of Massachusetts, who told me that he thought that there was no man in the United States whose writings at the time and for some years before the war had had so great influence upon public opinion in that country as the writings of John Greenleaf Whittier. And no doubt that arose partly from this—that he wrote strongly on the subject of freedom, and strongly against the system of slavery which was about to involve that great country in a great civil war ... Whittier himself when he attacks the question of negro slavery and the horror and the curse of it, writes in a manner which must have roused the indignation and excited the animosity of the people for whom he wrote against that enormous evil."

"Somehow not only for Christmas But all the long year through, The joy that you give to others Is the joy that comes back to you. And the more you spend in blessing The poor and lonely and sad, The more of your heart's possessing Returns to make you glad."

"Strike! Thou the Master, we Thy keys, The anthem of the destinies! The minor of Thy loftier strain, Our hearts shall breathe the old refrain — "Thy will be done!""

"For they the mind of Christ discern Who lean, like John, upon His breast."

"As yonder tower outstretches to the earth The dark triangle of its shade alone When the clear day is shining on its top; So, darkness in the pathway of man's life Is but the shadow of God's providence, By the great Sun of wisdom cast thereon; And what is dark below is light in heaven."

"God's ways seem dark, but, soon or late, They touch the shining hills of day; The evil cannot brook delay, The good can well afford to wait."

"Alas for maiden, alas for Judge, For rich repiner and household drudge! God pity them both! and pity us all, Who vainly the dreams of youth recall; For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: "It might have been!""

"Weary lawyers with endless tongues."

"A manly form at her side she saw, And joy was duty and love was law. Then she took up her burden of life again, Saying only, "It might have been"."

"He wedded a wife of richest dower, Who lived for fashion, as he for power. Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright glow, He watched a picture come and go: And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes Looked out in their innocent surprise."

"So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on, And Maud was left in the field alone. But the lawyers smiled that afternoon, When he hummed in court an old love-tune."

"Maud Muller, on a summer's day, Raked the meadows sweet with hay. Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth Of simple beauty and rustic health."